Alexander Smith: Drexel Tasks

Hello again! With the busyness of the last few weeks abroad and doing some final traveling, I realize I’ve gotten a bit behind on these blog posts, but expect to see a bunch coming the next few days/weeks. In this post, I want to talk a bit about keeping in touch with what is going on back home, but in particular, some advice for keeping on top of some things that need to be done for Drexel.

Despite the fact that you’re abroad, Drexel is still running as normal, and as such, there are things you need to continue to do for your education there while you’re abroad. One of the things is making sure you log on and register for classes once your course registration opens as it usually does. It is important to keep in mind the time-difference of 6 hours (although there is a week around registration time where Germany moves its clock back before the U.S. does and the difference is then only 5 hours, so be aware of this) when logging in to register, since registration usually opens at 7am, at least thats what I’ve always had. But there’s no need to get up early and register if yours opens at 7am as well, as this is 1pm in Germany. However if you’re in class at this time it would still be wise to login and register, as you don’t want to forget and then lose out on classes for your next term.

This seems obvious, but I think its worth mentioning, as it is easy to get caught up in your travels and forget that course registration is coming up, especially since the registration here at Mannheim is so different from Drexel’s, since Drexel class registration takes place in the middle of the term prior to the term you’re registering for, whereas Mannheim almost doesn’t have registration (more discussion about this in one of my posts from back in September).

Also, as I’ve found out, it is important to keep on top of your billing and financial aid as well. Again, while you are over here having a great time studying abroad, Drexel still wants to get paid, so you need to make sure you can facilitate this however you normally would. Also, its good to periodically check on your account and things to make sure everything is in order, since it can be harder to get in contact with people should a problem arise, since you can’t show up at Drexel Central to talk to someone, and calling can get expensive. Just like with the course registration, it is easy to forget that you have financial obligations with Drexel, which can result in a not so nice surprise.

In a future blog post, I will talk about the other big thing you need to accomplish for Drexel while abroad- co-op – but that will need its own post.

Until next time, I’ll leave you with a picture from Hamburg, Germany from a couple weeks ago. Tchüß!